Dallas-Fort Worth housing data is missing part of the market picture

This year most of the news about the local housing market has been good.

But how good is the data these reports are based on?

It depends on whom you ask.

Pre-owned home sales in North Texas have risen 16 percent in 2012 and median sales prices are 7 percent higher, according to the multiple listing service.

That’s the database real estate agents use to display home sales listings and record completed purchases.

Those MLS listings also provide information for Internet marketing sites including Realtor.com and others.

And every month we report the health of the local housing market based on those MLS results.

The collection and distribution of home sales data have moved light-years beyond where they were 30 years ago when the MLS info was regularly published in phone book-size volumes distributed to agents. (I’ve still got one of those old MLS books squirreled away in the bottom of my desk.)

With a couple of clicks of your computer mouse, details on millions of homes listed for sale around the country are sitting on your desk.

There’s only one snag. Not everything is in there.

Hundreds of properties are sold every month in the Dallas-Fort Worth area and never wind up in the MLS reports.

“That’s always been the case,” said Dr. James Gaines, an economist with the Real Estate Center at Texas A&M University. “We never have known all the new homes being sold because a lot of the builders don’t use the MLS.

“And people are increasingly using Craigslist and eBay for listing real estate,” he said. “We could be losing a good portion of the market” in the MLS figures.

In neighborhoods where competition for houses is strong, agents aren’t even putting their listings in the MLS. With these so-called hip pocket deals, houses are bought and sold in under-the-table transactions.

That may amount to almost a quarter of the sales in some neighborhoods.

“If you are a real estate agent and have a $1 million property that’s going to give you a big commission, you may not be happy to share the listing unless you have to,” Gaines said.

Also, sellers of exclusive properties are shy about letting the world know what their house fetched on the market. And they will sometimes require the real estate agent not to disclose the price at closing.

“The real estate organizations and the MLS are supposed to come down on them if they are doing that,” Gaines said. “The problem is the enforcement.”

Realtors say that’s as many as 20 percent of MLS sales in some neighborhoods don’t disclose the price.

In Texas, where property sales data is deemed by state law to be confidential, there’s really no way of tracking down the withheld sales prices.

Real estate agents estimate that about 10 percent of homes sold in the market trade without the help of a Realtor. Those properties aren’t in the MLS, either.

Economists and consumers have to make do with what’s left. And fortunately that’s still a big slice of the pie.

But arguably it’s easier to get a more accurate picture in markets where sales data is all public record. Even off-market transactions get recorded in those states.

Don’t hold your breath for that to happen around here. The taxman has been begging state legislators for years to require property sales data disclosures.

And if property tax appraisers can’t get that disclosure, consumers and market analysts don’t stand a chance.

“The motivation is the owners want to keep their values hidden so you don’t get a big tax bill,” said Ted Wilson of Dallas-based Residential Strategies. “That hurts the market because there are no comps to use” for sales appraisals.

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